Marisacat

Let’s see…. 14 March 2010

This diver stares into the jaws of death as he fends off a Great White shark, pushing its snout, then putting his hand in its mouth. These amazing pictures, taken from a nearby cage, were taken off Guadeloupe Island, Mexico by Don Carpenter

Picture: DON CARPENTER / NATIONAL at Telegraph Animals of the Week Gallery

… a team of nimble, sharp-toothed fish to cut the lines, sink that cage to ocean floor, out wait the air in the tanks… another team of strong fish to bend the bars……….

Fish Food! Everybody eat!

As an aside, I heard that it took three hours, obviously off camera, to pry open the jaws of poor Tillikun the captive whale… when he offed the “trainer”.

A good picture to post as I listen to the Frost Nixon go round, a PBS station south of here, San Mateo on the Peninsula, is running the whole of it as their tickle for pledge week (which seems to go 4 – 6 weeks n this area). Beats San Francisco, which is running the umpteenth re-run of that champagne bubbles orchestra man. Mercifully, I forget his name.

I have received my “the Census is coming” letter. Because this is The Most Important Census of Our Lifetimes. It used to be that every election was The Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes, but that has gotten old and no one listens to it any more, because these Important Elections don’t prevent anything bad from happening even if your side wins. So, now it’s the Census that’s critically important. I wonder what becomes Important next once the Census doesn’t help anything either. I’m guessing it will devolve to The Most Important NCAA Bracket of Our Lifetimes, followed closely by The Most Important American Idol Vote of Our Lifetimes. Eventually we will run out of Important Events and will all just turn on each other.

HA! Prepare to expect the next step… a card. It advises you of the 800 number to call if you have questions filling out hte census. I got that one a few days ago…. the envelope and letter a few days before that.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s proposal to withdraw from Afghanistan was debated, heatedly, for hours in the House of Representatives on Wednesday. After the debate, dozens of Representatives cast their vote to end the war immediately. This was an unprecedented event in the history of the conflict, now in its ninth year.

Think about that for a moment: an unprecedented event, on the floor of the House, going on for hours, involving a question of supreme national importance. Regardless of one’s position on the issue, is this not the very definition of “news”? But on Thursday morning, you could search high and low on the front pages (print and web) of both the New York Times and the Washington Post — our national arbiters of serious newsworthiness — yet find no mention whatsoever of this event. This, even though the web fronts — unlike the paper versions — contain headlines for dozens of stories, including sections devoted entirely to Washington politics.

You would have had to know about the debate already — or else trawl diligently through piles of pixels or print — to reach the small stories that our papers of record deigned to release on the subject. No ordinary newspaper reader — someone who has a more than passing interest in current events but also has a life to live — would even know that such a debate took place, much less learn anything about the powerful arguments against the war delivered on the floor of the national legislature. That is to say, it is entirely possible that a reasonably informed and engaged citizen of the Republic would not even be aware that dozens of elected officials at the highest level of government voiced their support for the most radical position on the war: immediate withdrawal.

But such is the way of our imperial system. Our ruling class does not want the citizenry to know there are any alternatives to the grand bipartisan consensus on the true aims of government: servicing the needs of Militarism and Money. And so what cannot be ignored entirely is buried “certain fathoms in the earth … deeper than did ever plummet sound.”

snip

Today? Dennis Kucinich opposes the corporate-coddling health care boondoggle pushed by the White House — and he is called an accomplice in mass death by progressive paladin Markos Moulitsas. Kos even levelled the most dread epithet in the entire progressive canon at Kucinich’s opposition: “It’s definitely a very Ralph Nader-esque approach .. a very unrealistic and self-defeating approach.”

So this is where we’ve come to. Ralph Nader, who has spent decades fighting corporate power, often successfully (which is more than Kos can say), is now a figure of scorn and derision — his very name a perjorative term — among our leading “progressives.”

And why? Because Nader dared to offer an alternative to the bipartisan consensus of Militarism and Money in the 2000 election. And this, according to the unrealistic and self-defeating mythology of serious progressives, is what threw the Florida vote — and thus the election — to George W. Bush. This fairy tale persists despite the fact that the recounts carried out by the media consortium after the election clearly showed that Al Gore received more votes than Bush in Florida, regardless of Nader’s total. It was Al Gore and his fellow establishment Democrats who “threw” the election to George W. Bush by refusing to challenge the result in Congress, by refusing to confront the transparent fraud and corruption at the very heart of the political process, and to use the tools provided them by the Constitution to uphold the will of the electorate.

If the Federal Reserve is waiving a fundamental principle in banking regulation, the credit crunch must still be sapping the strength of America’s biggest banks. Fortune’s Peter Eavis documents an unusual Fed move.

NEW YORK (Fortune) — In a clear sign that the credit crunch is still affecting the nation’s largest financial institutions, the Federal Reserve agreed this week to bend key banking regulations to help out Citigroup (Charts, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (Charts, Fortune 500), according to documents posted Friday on the Fed’s web site. (aka Friends of Bill Clinton)

The Aug. 20 letters from the Fed to Citigroup and Bank of America state that the Fed, which regulates large parts of the U.S. financial system, has agreed to exempt both banks from rules that effectively limit the amount of lending that their federally-insured banks can do with their brokerage affiliates. (Just smell what that Rock is cooking… gee kinda smells like 1929) The exemption, which is temporary, means, for example, that Citigroup’s Citibank entity can substantially increase funding to Citigroup Global Markets, its brokerage subsidiary. Citigroup and Bank of America requested the exemptions, according to the letters, to provide liquidity to those holding mortgage loans, mortgage-backed securities, and other securities.

This unusual move by the Fed shows that the largest Wall Street firms are continuing to have problems funding operations during the current market difficulties, according to banking industry skeptics. The Fed’s move appears to support the view that even the biggest brokerages have been caught off guard by the credit crunch and don’t have financing to deal with the resulting dislocation in the markets. The opposing, less negative view is that the Fed has taken this step merely to increase the speed with which the funds recently borrowed at the Fed’s discount window can flow through to the bond markets, where the mortgage mess has caused a drying up of liquidity.

On Wednesday, Citibank and Bank of America said that they and two other banks accessed $500 million in 30-day financing at the discount window. A Citigroup spokesperson declined to comment. Bank of America dismissed the notion that Banc of America Securities is not well positioned to fund operations without help from the federally insured bank. “This is just a technicality to allow us to use our regular channels of business with funds from the Fed’s discount window,” says Bob Stickler, spokesperson for Bank of America. “We have no current plans to use the discount window beyond the $500 million announced earlier this week.”

There is a good chance that other large banks, like J.P. Morgan (Charts, Fortune 500), have been granted similar exemptions. The Federal Reserve and J.P. Morgan didn’t immediately comment.

(WSWK: Wall Street Welfare Kings… It is sickening to see that the only reason Reagan and Clinton have gotten this far is because the tapped Americans hatred towards poor Black people… Reforming Welfare as we know it…. yeah by give 100 times as much welfare to the rich)

The regulations in question effectively limit a bank’s funding exposure to an affiliate to 10% of the bank’s capital. But the Fed has allowed Citibank and Bank of America to blow through that level. Citigroup and Bank of America are able to lend up to $25 billion apiece under this exemption, according to the Fed. If Citibank used the full amount, “that represents about 30% of Citibank’s total regulatory capital, which is no small exemption,” says Charlie Peabody, banks analyst at Portales Partners.

The Fed says that it made the exemption in the public interest, because it allows Citibank to get liquidity to the brokerage in “the most rapid and cost-effective manner possible.”

SO, HOW SERIOUS IS THIS RULE-BENDING? VERY. ONE OF THE CENTRAL TENETS OF BANKING REGULATION IS THAT BANKS WITH FEDERALLY INSURED DEPOSITS SHOULD NEVER BE OVER-EXPOSED TO BROKERAGE SUBSIDIARIES; INDEED, FOR DECADES FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS WERE LEGALLY REQUIRED TO KEEP THE TWO UNITS COMPLETELY SEPARATE. THIS MOVE BY THE FED EATS AWAY AT THE PRINCIPLE.

Not that it’s a surprise (though I was willing stupidly to hope otherwise), but they’re reporting on Countdown that Kucinich is going to cave tomorrow in a press coverage and announce that he’s going to vote for this insurance company enrichment act.

I agree… I think it is designed to break millions of people. Literally, break.

Corps and companies are going to swfitly, over a very few years, dump providing coverage. It was always lunacy that our system was formulated on employer based coverage… now that will end. Mainly becuse the corps have signaled for years they want out… one of the few reasons this was even revisted. It sure was not for the peeeeeeple.

So, employer based coverage will be phased out but with no decent replacement… none at all. Just a mandate to buy insurance… AND this bill knocks out what few states and districts have tried to create, at the least, high risk pools.

Among so much else that it is going to do… the mere fact, rarely repeated and almost never discussed, that the enforcement of the mandate will be run thru the IRS is frightening.

Dear New York Times,
OK, OK, we get the picture: you want the United States to attack Iran. Why don’t you go ahead and put a permanent banner across the top of the front page with the Cato-like adjuration: “Iran Must Be Destroyed!” Or maybe you could just tack it on to every single story: “Yankees Trade to Bolster Outfield; Iran Must Be Destroyed.” “Mixed Results for Apple I-Pad; Iran Must Be Destroyed.” “Markets Anxious Over Health Care Vote; Iran Must Be Destroyed.” “New Bistro Revels in Bohemian Ambience; Iran Must Be Destroyed.”

After all, hardly a week goes by now without some big juicy piece of Times scaremongery about Iran’s nuclear program, usually with the same image of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a lab coat looking blankly at metal tubes. The thrust of these stories is always the same: Iran is galloping toward nuclear weaponhood — a “global threat” that “cannot be allowed to stand.” Last week, it was Bill Broad, goosing the rubes with this little number, a supposed “science” piece: For Iran, Enriching Uranium Only Gets Easier.

For a moment, let’s put aside the fact of Iran’s persistent denials of a desire for nuclear weapons — including the explicit, repeated statements of the theocracy’s supreme religious and political leader that such weapons are anathema. And let’s put aside the fact that despite the most extensive and intrusive inspection regime in the history of atomic energy development, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is not doing exactly what it says it is doing: developing non-weaponized nuclear power for peaceful purposes. These are just facts, after all — and facts, as the sainted Ronald Reagan once told us, are stupid things.

But even if we were to grant the fevered fantasies of our masturbatory militarists the slightest tincture of credibility — or even take their brazen propaganda as gospel truth — they have never yet explained exactly why Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons would be a greater “global threat” than, say, the bristling arsenals produced by the illegal, covert, crimeful programs in Israel, India and Pakistan. Nor are we told why an ill-gotten Iranian bomb would be worse than the vast “legal” nuclear arsenals of Russia, China, France, Great Britain and, of course, the only nation in the history of the world that has actually used nuclear weapons to slaughter hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians, the United States of America.

Or to put it another way, in the immortal words of Arthur Silber: “So Iran Gets Nukes. So What?”

Reports emerged this weekend from Scotland’s Sunday Herald that the US government has contracted with a Florida company to ship a massive amount of weaponry, including hundreds of bunker buster bombs, to Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia, a small island in the Indian Ocean, was depopulated by Britain in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and transferred to the United States as a military base. The island’s proximity to Iran suggests it may be used as a staging ground for US air strikes against the nation.

The proximity is not lost on Iran’s state media, which is reporting that the bunker-busters are a clear move to threaten Iran’s nuclear facilities. The US has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran over its civilian nuclear program.

The Sunday Herald report also cites numerous experts as saying that the lack of publicity for the move, just one of several examples of the Obama Administration adding major amounts of weaponry to the area around Iran, suggests they believe a confrontation is more likely. The Pentagon has thus far refused to comment.

So.

At the age of 86, Noam Chomsky remains as active as ever in his work as a world-renowned political dissident and pioneering linguist. He has also opened a new chapter in his life, recently celebrating a one-year anniversary with his new wife, Valeria Wasserman Chomsky, his second marriage. Chomsky discusses the joys of newfound love and why it is a "pri […]

Noam Chomsky weighs in on the Black Lives Matter movement across the United States, calling it a response to the unresolved consequences of slavery and racism dating back hundreds of years. "[Slavery] is a large part of the basis for our wealth and privilege," Chomsky says. "Is there a slave museum in the United States? The first one is just b […]

Following its election in January on a pledge to confront the austerity program that's decimated Greece's economy, the Syriza government has faced a major pushback from international creditors led by Germany. Days after Greece secured a four-month extension to a loan package in exchange for new conditions on its spending, Noam Chomsky says the Euro […]

World-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky discusses why National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden should be welcomed back to the United States as a hero and why those who authorized the government surveillance he exposed should be on trial, not him. Chomsky also argues that while mass surveillance has been ineffective i […]

The Islamic State might be the best-funded radical Islamist group, perhaps in history, but the coalition air campaign that’s targeting its oil-refining operations and military assets has begun to damage…Click to Continue »

At the annual American-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, speakers advanced Iran as an existential threat and sought to downplay differences between Israel and the US while demonstrators were arrested outside

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday the chamber was moving toward debate on a bill that would require President Barack Obama to submit any final nuclear deal with Iran for Congress' approval.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday against accepting a nuclear deal with Iran that would be a "countdown to a potential nuclear nightmare" by a country that "will always be an enemy of America".

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama's advisers would recommend he veto a Senate resolution to overturn recent National Labor Relations Board reforms if the measure were to reach the White House, his administration said in a statement.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bipartisan talks on a bill to streamline the passage of trade deals through Congress are "stuck" over Democratic demands, the Republican chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance said on Tuesday.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.